ETD Collection

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Community organization--South Africa

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    Homelessness and Service Provision: a case Study of Johannesburg Organisation of Services to the Homeless (JOSH).
    (2019) Mlauzi, Kate
    Over the years Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been providing a variety of social services, ranging from improving the skills of homeless individuals to helping prevent homelessness. This paper shed light on the current efforts by the Johannesburg Organisation of Services to the Homeless (JOSH), a Non-Profit Company (NPC) providing services to homeless individuals in Randburg. The study aimed to bridge the knowledge gap that exists in understanding the experiences of CSOs in service provision by exploring JOSH’s experiences in providing services to homeless individuals. The study asked the following research question: What are the experiences of JOSH as a CSO in providing services to homeless individuals in the City of Johannesburg? And the following three sub-questions: What services are provided to homeless people by JOSH? What informs the approach taken for service provision by JOSH? How does JOSH understand their experiences of service provision? I adopted a qualitative methodology and administered 15 face to face semi-structured interviews with the Directors, volunteers, and the staff at JOSH. This approach presented the opportunity to listen to the ideas, experiences and stories of people engaged with social action at JOSH. I used participant observation to collect data. I found this valuable as it gave me an opportunity to participate and observe the settings at JOSH in a way that provided a nuanced understanding of the services provided at JOSH. Thinking critically about the parameters of my research, I used purposive sampling to select my interviews. I chose people who worked closely with JOSH, whose knowledge and experiences would enable me to answer my research question and sub-questions. The fight to end homelessness has brought a new strategic de-instutionalised model of community engagement that addresses issues of social justice through spaces of engagement. According to Cloke (2011) these new spaces of engagement that emerge are known as ‘rapprochement’. This concept is developed in the literature review. It provides a framework of how non-statutory agencies uses a post-secular approach to engage with the homeless population through community-based social action. Five major themes emerged from data analysis: (1) A snapshot of JOSH’s homeless services, (2) Defining JOSH’s homeless services (3) JOSH’s view on homelessness, (4) Approach taken by JOSH, (5) A culture of support at JOSH and (6) challenges faced by JOSH. The first theme describes the different types of services that are provided by JOSH. This study has revealed that JOSH offers food services, skills assessment as well as counselling services to persons experiencing homelessness. JOSH does this by using a social entrepreneurial model, which is an example of rapprochement. This social enterprise model allows JOSH to put agency, innovation and hope at the heart of their approach. This approach 5 has enabled JOSH to create a space that is a transformative form of hospitality and a leadership style that allows different stakeholders to develop and acquire a sense of agency. The second theme demonstrated the model JOSH has adopted to provide services to homeless individuals. The third theme described the different terms JOSH uses to conceptualise homelessness. The fourth theme illustrates that JOSH uses a case management and service integration system to identify individuals who are homeless. The fifth theme describes how Directors, volunteers, and the staff at JOSH support homeless individuals. The final theme describes the different challenges JOSH faces in providing services to homeless individuals. The findings of the study revealed that JOSH’s soup kitchen was more successful because food services were the most accessible and reliable service to homeless individuals. JOSH also indicated that there is a need for an overnight shelter which was currently not JOSH’s focus of service delivery. Recommendations are made based on the findings of the study.
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    Community radio's compliance to programming: a case study on the selection of content for Alex FM's current affairs talk show
    (2018) Baloyi, Makungu
    Community radio is radio that serves a specific community. In South Africa, Community radio licenses are issued on two grounds, to either serve a geographic community or a community of interest. In both these instances the mandate is to serve the community and provide content that is relevant to the community. Aleaz (2010) highlight that Community radio is supposed to empower the marginalised communities and give them a voice. One of the ways to empower these communities and give them a voice is through programming and providing content that represent them and maximising their participation in programming. This research looked at how content was selected for Alex FM’s Current affairs talk show. It explored how content is gathered and selected with the aim of establishing whether communities are involved in the process. It also sought to investigate the factors that contribute to content selection and whether there is any link to community participation and development. The research is located within the tenets of public sphere and the democratic participatory theory. These theories offered an understanding of the role community radio plays in community in development. Democratic participatory theory values inclusion of citizen’s voices in public deliberations. This was corresponded with the public sphere theory’s version of Nancy Fraser’s of the sub-altern public spheres. The theory highlighted that there is a need to have multiple public spheres to allow the marginalized who cannot participate in Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere to still have a voice. Qualitative research methodology was used to explore the content selection process at Alex FM for their current affairs show. Together with participant observations and pilot listening the researcher used these methods to collect data. The findings revealed that factors that contribute to the selection of content are news values. Topicality and relevance being the main ones captured in this study. The findings also show that content gathering process at Alex FM; maximises community participation. Subsequently, this guides the station (or producers of the talk show) to structure content of the show in line with the needs of the communities
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    Africanising community radio broadcasting: the case of Vukani Community Radio (VCR) in South Africa
    (2017) Tyali, Siyasanga Mhlangabezi
    Decolonisation and Africanisation of spaces emerging from administrative and settler colonialism have been suggested as forms of challenging colonial legacies that are still largely present in the Global South and particularly within the African continent. Mainly, this has also been the case in recent South African discourses that have called for the decolonisation and ‘transformation’ of key areas in the country to build a decolonised African country of the future. This thesis, therefore, deals with the subject of the community radio broadcasting sector that is operating during South Africa’s ‘postcolonial’ era, and the steps undertaken by this sector in Africanising itself. Starting from the conviction that the media has a historical role in shaping and communicating cultures as well as identities of the colonised and ‘formerly’ colonised, the thesis posits that the community radio sector is one of the vital arenas that can be used to understand the continuities and discontinuities of colonial cultures in media institutions. Thus, to comprehend and establish the state of Africanisation within the community radio sector of the country, the study investigated and analysed the case of Vukani Community Radio (VCR); a community radio station that is easily one of the oldest community orientated broadcasters in South Africa. Furthermore, to challenge the idea of colonised and neo-colonised media spaces, this thesis was grounded on an understanding of the complexities of Africanisation as a decolonising project in a media institution that is operating in the post-settler-colonial administration of this country. Adopting a case study approach, this study attempted to understand the urgency of a broadcast media platform in asserting the cultures and identities of ‘previously’ colonised Africans on the medium's airwaves. To make sense of the conceptual challenges surrounding the study, the thesis has drawn on decolonial discourses, including the theory of Afrocentricity, the coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, the coloniality of being and the decolonial turn. The adoption of these theories by the study, therefore, also demonstrates a conscious delinking of this study from the traditional theories of media and cultural studies that have habitually underpinned the South African canon. Moreover, this study has adopted the use of critical decolonised methodologies approach in the pursuit of answers about the extent of Africanisation of the media institution. The decolonised approach of the adopted method lay in revealing the colonial excesses that have underpinned research methodologies as well as an ‘auto-critique’ of these excesses in the context of this study. The data analysed to arrive at the findings of this study included several macro and micro policy documents, a content analysis of three (3) categories of community radio programmes [Talk Radio, African Cultural Lifestyle & News Programming] that totalled 270 hours of community radio content. The study also relied on several semi structured interviews with various internal and external stakeholders that make up the station's key constituencies. In the analysis of evidence that would uncover the extent of the Africanisation of the community radio station, the findings of the thesis revealed several yet overlapping thematic areas that suggest pathways towards the Africanisation of the media institution. These, among others, included the use of this media institution as an African public sphere, its embracing of the philosophy of Ubuntu, its role in the decolonisation of African memory and its approaches towards ethnicity and Africanity within the broadcasting area. These themes emanating from the analysed data of the study also illustrate how this media institution is operating as a pocket of resistance against colonial, neo-colonial and imperialistic media cultures. In addition to these thematic areas, the findings of this study also demonstrate that when only media policy documents are adopted, this can lead to ambiguities in the pursuit of Africanisation as decolonisation. The study however also demonstrates that the urgency of the community radio station in catering for the surrounding constituency can potentially demonstrate an eventual Africanisation of the airwaves. Finally, this study concludes that the Africanisation of the airwaves is demonstrable at Vukani Community Radio (VCR) but its permanent enforcement is dependent on the vigilance of the stations constituencies and how they define and enforce the role of their media institution.